Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Two New Carousel Horse Paintings

On Christmas morning my 4 year old niece excitedly gives me the gift she picked out for me. Inside the package is a small cookie tin that plays music and around the outside is a picture of carousel horses. My sister says she thought long and hard over this gift and was quite proud of it. Through a beaming smile on her face she takes it and tells me that these are like the horseys that Aunt Nikki paints, then her sad puppy dog eyes come out and she looks at me and says "Aunt Nikki, could you paint me a picture of a horsey?" So paint her a horsey I did. To the left is Clara, which is for her and Najira, (meaning flower) below, for her little sister.

I actually enjoyed painting these. I don't often use 100% cotton paper because of the cost as I perfer to use better paints. I bought a piece of Arches Cold Pressed Paper simply because it was for my nieces and I want this to last. It is such a pleasure to paint on it, the paints react very differently than normal watercolor paper so it took some time to adjust a bit, it has been a long time since I have painted on cotton paper. It was also nice not having the paper curl up (even though I wet and stretch the regular paper before painting) It is also great for not getting streaks in the paint.

Anyway I will be posting them in the near future to CafePress. They are already available on Zazzle